Law enforcement personnel often carry firearms in their vehicles. These weapons, which include shot guns, rifles, assault rifles and other types of long guns, are often stored in a gun lock fastened securely to a gun rack. The gun rack is mounted either horizontally or vertically at an interior location in the vehicle, and generally is mounted in substantially parallel to a planar region serving as the mounting base in the vehicle, such as the floor, a sidewall or the ceiling.
The design of the storing assembly must provide for immediate release of the weapon when needed by the law enforcement officer. Yet, easy access to the weapon can present a problem, for example, if an intruder or other unauthorized person attempted to misappropriate the weapon.
Further complicating the problem is the fact that whereas in the past, law enforcement personnel generally carried only one type of weapon, typically a service revolver. Today, they must have a variety of weapons having considerably differing sizes and configurations. The choice of location at which the weapon is stored in the vehicle varies considerably depending on the type of weapon selected and the geometry of the vehicle.
Storage of such weapons in the home presents the same problems. The weapon must be secure but readily available when needed.
Presently available gun locks or cradles have been designed to accommodate a particular firearm of a preselected size and configuration and to hold the firearm at only one particular location on the weapon such as the fore grip, adjacent to the trigger, etc. Representative of such devices is the stationary gun lock disclosed by Glines, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,881,386. This device has a single clamping arm that locks over the gun barrel. The clamping arm can be retracted either by actuation of a magnetic assembly that retracts a locking pin, or by inserting a key in a keyway to engage a follower and push the locking pin out of its locking position.
Another type of lock is that disclosed by Smith in U.S. Pat. No. 2,316,995 that employs a pair of opposing jaw members to clamp around the barrel of a gun.
Still another such gun lock is disclosed by Pease in U.S. Pat. No. 2,668,645. Pease describes a swingable gun lock that is pivoted into position over a stationary base to clamp a gun securely in place.
A problem with all of these presently available devices is that they are pre-sized to accommodate only one type of firearm.
Further, once affixed, the gun lock cannot be moved relative to its mounting position nor can the lock grab any cross-section of any weapon to achieve one lock that fits all weapons and locking situations. U.S. Pat. No. 5,934,112, issued to Rice et al. on Aug. 10, 1999, discloses a locking gun rack system using a ratchet mechanism that can be locked onto various position of the weapon. However, this reference does not disclose or suggest the advantage of having the locking portion of the device being able to slide relative to the attachment portion of the lock. Further, this device teaches away from the protecting the attachment portion of the gun lock from tampering as the mounting holes 12A are clearly accessible when a weapon is locked into position.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,531,368, issued to Morford on Jul. 2, 1996, discloses a vehicle mountable gun lock that has a mounting rack that can lock a weapon at different locations along a mounting bar via support cradles. One of the cradles is outfitted with a lock. In order to remove the weapon, the locking cradle must be opened and each non-locking cradle released. This is time consuming and expensive due to the number of parts involved. Further, the bar attachment points are not protected from tampering as a consequence of the locked gun lock.
Thus, there is no presently available gun lock sufficiently versatile to hold firearms of a variety of sizes and shapes in the lock that may be slid relative to the mounting track so that its position in the vehicle can be adjusted to the most efficient location for storage and retrieval.
Further, there is no presently available gun lock that has ratchet locking mechanism with a manual override or a gun lock that has a ratchet activatable by a solenoid and also has a manual override. Further, no presently available gun lock has a locking mechanism that slides relative the mounting track that attaches the gun lock to a storage surface.